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Client Challenge

A large NSW Government Department had Windows 2003 Active Directory infrastructure providing Directory Services to support the overall corporate IT infrastructure, consisting of end users and workstations, data centre and remote sites, domain services and applications / systems that are used for day-to-day operations. The organisation has more than 250 applications, mainly hosted within two data centres.

In addition to this, there were end users and workstations across the state in multiple sites, of which approximately 190 sites have local domain controllers. There are 6 core domain controllers) and 190 regional / satellite servers across the remote sites. Approximately 90% of the remote end user devices (e.g. workstations) are on Windows 7 operating system with the remainder on Windows XP.

The aim of the project was to upgrade the Active Directory Forest Functional and Domain Functional levels from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2.

FinXL Solution

FinXL proposed the following phased approach which was agreed by the client:

  • Discovery and Analysis – Review current Active Directory setup to understand dependencies and analyse for risks as well as remediation.
  • Design, Build and Test – Build the new Active Directory setup and test for compatibility with the current organisation infrastructure and applications.
  • Design includes enablement of the new Active Directory to consume Cloud Services or federate into externally hosted Cloud infrastructure.
  • Implementation Planning – Including back out and risk reduction strategy (contingency).
    Implementation and cutover.
  • Post implementation support.

No changes were to be made to the domain name, server names, IP addresses, IP subnets and hence minimal changes (if any) to downstream applications or infrastructure.

The outcomes from the project include:

  • A fully operational and integrated Windows Server 2012 R2 Active Directory.
  • Enabled decommissioning of Windows Server 2003 Active Directory.
  • The new Active Directory will enable the client to consume externally hosted Cloud Services from any Cloud Provider.